DESCRIPTION OF THE SUCCESS STORY
Students from the X-th D class, parents and their close relatives, members of the class council, headmaster, everybody contributed, equally, to avoid school drop out by the student C.A.
I had come for one year to the “Alexandru cel Bun” High School, Botoșani, and I was appointed form master at the Xth class, where half of the students were on the verge of school failure, were inclined to play truant, showed verbal violence and lack of motivation for learning, were used to lie their parents concerning their school records and avoided to let them know about the meetings with parents.
All the students in the class graduated high school and passed the school leaving examination, 80% of them graduating, meanwhile, and finding a job. The student C. A. is about to graduate the Medicine Faculty, he comes to school every year and speaks to other students about the importance of school, he does not hesitate to tell his story, he has a well defined plan to develop a career and considers that no sacrifice is too big to become a good doctor.
I met him when he was a student in the X-th class, his father had died, his mother was suffering with diabetes and his brother was a newly Law Faculty but who had not found work yet. The student in question attends the X-th class for a second time, he is constantly late for school, he feels persecuted, being persuaded that he will be flunked again at maths convinced because the teacher does not want to give him a passing mark, he considers that school brings him no benefits, as long as his brother, a graduate already, can’t find work, and that success means, in fact, to make money without any great efforts, without having the faintest idea of how that could be accomplished.
The three members of the family live in an apartment with two rooms, living on the mother’s disease pension. The students confesses that he loves his mother and he begs me not to disclose her his problems at school because she is ill and he does not want to upset her. He complains that the doctors can’t find a solution to improve her health and that his father died of the same disease. He has an uncle who is a maths teacher and he is not very close to him but he feels proud to discover that he was my maths teacher in high school and that I appreciated him for his pedagogical and human qualities.
His father embodied the factor of economic balance within the family. The moment he died, he was alone at home and he did not know how to react to help him, what makes him feel guilty, though the family tells him that he was too young and that his father suffered from a heart condition that he couldn’t have complete control over. His mother’s disease is getting worse and worse, she grows blind, so the doctors are forced to amputate her toes.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The student started talking about his family situation, especially about the fact that he goes to hospital with his mother more and more often. He does not like the doctors’ behavior. Meanwhile his brother gets a job. I started a counseling program aimed at motivating him to graduate the X-th class to have at least the compulsory education, but I gradually discovered, that he would like to help the others that had experienced the same situation as his, the way, he believes, the doctors did not behave as far as his mother was concerned. I asked for the biology teacher’s help. He talked to him about the necessary conditions for the admission to the Medicine Faculty and showed willingness to help. At the beginning of the XII-a class he confessed that he would become a doctor.
His mother’s disease is a source of stress, but becomes a stronger motivation force the moment she, just little before graduating the XII-th class. He uses the time left till the school leaving examination and admission to university to honour his mother’s memory, engaging to do his best to help the others.
School drop out is, many times, a display of rebellion against the classmates’ and the teachers’ carelessness regarding one’s personal problems. It is enough for one of them to show compassion, concern for the drama that the student experiences, so that one can find the force to turn a personal experience into a life lesson, and, therefore, a motivation source.
